Actor | Writer | Producer

A while ago, I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone because I realized I was checking it constantly. I’m sure many of you can relate to this scenario:

“I’m bored… Let’s see what’s happening on Facebook… Oh, these people are doing/talking about these things… I like this, I don’t care about that… Bored again… Let’s check Twitter… Damn, there’s too much here to catch up on… I don’t have anything smart to say and I have to be smart because there is a character limit… Okay, Twitter is boring now… Let me see what’s going on on Facebook!”

And down the rabbit hole we go. I knew more about what was happening on these two platforms than what was going on in front of me.I think the day it really hit home though, was the day I was checking social media on my phone as I walked down the street… and I knocked into a blind person.

Yup, a blind person.

I’m not proud. I had bumped into a lot of other people before for the same reason– the elderly, children… oh please, don’t say you have never done it! But this blind person thing was an all-time low. So delete away I did.

And damn, it felt good. I was proud and admittedly even thought I wasbetter than everyone else (ten seconds after the blind person thing). But wasn’t I? I was now present for my life, I didn’t feel as anxious, I could engage in longer conversations, and my fingers hurt significantly less.It’s possible, you guys. It totally is.

“But I promote my work on social media!” Buffer, people. It’s called Buffer. No more excuses.

Now, I didn’t delete Instagram because c’mon, Instagram is just pretty pictures and pretty pictures enrich my life. Also, if I deleted it, I couldn’t use it at all because you can’t post from a computer like you could on Facebook and Twitter.

This is what I told myself, and then slowly but surely it happened:

“I’m bored… Let me see what’s on Instagram… Ooh pretty picture… Cute baby… Cute dog… Oh, yay, they got married… Selfie… Selfie… Another selfie…I can’t take all these selfies…Need to get off Instagram…”

Five minutes later…

“I’m bored… What’s going on on Instagram?”

That’s when I discovered that Instagram is a gateway drug. I can say, “Oh I’m not doing heroin (Facebook) or cocaine (Twitter). I’m just smoking a shit ton of pot (Instagram) — but that’s okay right? Because I can’t get addicted to weed.”

Wrong.

Addiction isn’t just physical. It’s totally mental, too. And the more we ignore that fact, the more we allow ourselves to run from reality, which is really what addiction is all about:

“I can’t take my life or my feelings right now so let me ignore them by drinking this, snorting that, eating this, buying that, getting totally involved in what others are doing, seeking validation, obsessing over men/women/both, watching hours of television, working long hours, checking my phone all the damn time, etc. etc. etc.“

Addiction takes so many more forms than we readily (or are willing) to see.

So what would happen if we detoxed? If we took away all the distractions and stopped fleeing from our lives? Is it possible to deal with the here and now?

I think we think we can’t.

We have this tendency of turning away from the bad and pretending to not see it, thinking that avoiding it with all the aforementioned addictions will make us feel better.

It’s totally normal, really. We think we are taking care of ourselves. We are trying to take care of ourselves. But unfortunately, we’re not. It’s like when a kid has a nightmare and they want to sleep with their parents because they are scared and the parents say okay and then let them do it the next night and the night after, and every single time they have a nightmare until they are 25 and they suddenly realize they have a real big problem that they are going to have to face.

What?

Let me try again: We can hide our pain for a little while, sure, but then it comes up again and again and again. And each time, when we stuff it back down with these distractions, we develop a need for even bigger distractions, higher highs, because we’ve built up a tolerance. Our old substances aren’t enough, so we have to eat even more, buy even more, stare into screens even longer.

When you really think about it, what is a feeling but a thing that passes? What horrible situation in your life never ended?

Think about the last terrible thing that happened to you and the way that you felt. It’s awful, I know. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I truly am.I don’t want to diminish any experience ever. Your feelings, your experiences, all of it, are totally valid but…

You are still alive.

And remember that day you had, that moment long after the terrible moment, when things were good, when you were maybe even happy? Wow. That’s beautiful, isn’t it? The way that some days can really suck and some days, you can be happy just because the sun came up. Well, let me tell you something:

The sun always comes up.

If we have this reference, this hindsight to say, “Oh, hey, this happened years ago and I got through it, I’m still alive,” then why not just feel all the feels when they happen, stop with the addictive searching for those things outside ourselves that we think will make us feel better (but only do momentarily), and just go through it?

In my experience, “that which I resist persists.”It’s a waste of time trying to go around the thing because the thing will constantly pop up over and over again. It’s so much better (and frankly, more efficient) to go through it and let the wound heal. Quit picking at the scab just because it itches now. It will eventually stop itching and soon it will fall away on its own. It’s what scabs do.

So, this is my commitment to myself: Each day, I will try (imperfectly) to quit scratching the itch, stop avoiding that which is in front of me, put down the screen, the pizza, the obsession with what people think of me, and just let myself be. Let life be.

Today I am 34 years-old. It’s not old but it’s not necessarily young either. I have to admit, this one has been a little hard for me. As this birthday approached, I kept thinking, “What if I die at 68? Have I already lived half my life?”

I suffer from the never-enough syndrome: I am not healthy enough; I am not pretty enough; I don’t take care of myself enough; there’s never enough time; I have not done enough, succeeded enough; I am not enough. And so I’m afraid that if my life is halfway over, what have I really done? Who have I become? Do I have enough life left to do the things I want to do and become the person I want to be?

I didn’t know it till recently but I had this unconscious idea of who I would be by 35. I never would have admitted that I had a plan but now that I’m almost 35, I am realizing it was there all along: I was supposed to be a well-respected working artist with money.

I opted to take a path where merit means less than in most careers. It doesn’t matter how talented I am, I still need a B-job to support my art (at least for now). I am mostly okay with not going into a more predictable career. I didn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer and if I did do any of those things, it would purely be for security and money. That’s just true for me. More power to the people who took those paths because they wanted to.

My path, though, has made me work two jobs my whole life, sometimes more. One to pay the rent and one to feed my soul. And because of that, my life has sometimes meant coming home or not coming home from work to go to work. There have been lots of sacrifices besides money, like times when I couldn’t go out with friends, and whole weeks where I’d go without having dinner or going to bed with Michael. People have mostly understood that, and those that haven’t aren’t around anymore.

And I truly believed that this path I took would be worth it because I would get the results I wanted by, like I said, 35. But now that I’m here at 34 and sure, a little saddened by the realization that things don’t always (often do not) work out as planned, I am also beginning to realize…

It’s the path that mattered all along.

You hear this kind of thing all the time:

And I don’t know about you but I always thought it was bullshit. I’ve run through life wanting to one day get to the finish line and say, “I HAVE ARRIVED!” But each year, I learn some things that make me think, “Oh, I’m not there yet. I’ve still got so much more to learn.”

I listen to a lot of interviews on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, mostly by actors/directors/writers I really like and have been working forever, like Ron Howard, Alan Alda, and Sir Patrick Stewart. These are not “young” guys. However, what really strikes me about all of them is that despite their age and experience, they are still learning and are excited to still be doing so.

Ever meet those old(er) people who are willing to try anything? Those people are my heroes. Their willingness to try new things tells me that, despite their years on this earth, they don’t presume to know everything about life and the world. They know there’s still so much mystery left on this earth and their curiosity gives them the energy to explore.

That’s they key I guess: maintaining curiosity.

I want to be one of those old people. Year after year when things don’t turn out as planned, I want to take a bird’s eye view and stop looking at the things I haven’t done/seen, but the things I have.

So, what I did I do at 33?

I traveled across the country and showed my film in several cities, meeting new people, and continuing the conversation about mental health.

“Tell me you love me.” How often is that phrase the subtext of your words? Does the need to hear it haunt your mind? Frankly, it does mine.

Sometimes I can’t see that approval and love is what I am truly seeking. Often, in fact. Usually the situation goes something like this: I do something big, something I’ve worked my butt off for. The acknowledgment is not enough and sometimes not even there. I cry uncontrollably, a cry fueled by anger, frustration, and a nagging feeling like, “I did something wrong. There is something wrong with me.”

The part that makes this all a little sadder is that I do get affirmation from friends and loved ones. But it’s the people that I don’t get it from that I have this extreme need to get it from. The ones I deem challenges. The ones whose love I have to work for, because anything worth having is worth working for, right?

Wrong.

Too long have I put my self-worth in the hands of others, giving too much weight and value to people that I think are better than me. I am a people-pleaser, and that’s really getting old.

Because when you think about it, does it ever end? Isn’t there always something “you could be doing better”? Something others with their objectivity and hindsight tell you you should be doing because it would get you closer to perfection? The thing about perfection is it does not exist, so the more you strive for it, the more it’s like jumping to reach a basketball* net when you are only 5’2″. Sure, sometimes you’ll jump a little higher because if you do it everyday, practice will kick in. But some days you’ll be tired or sick and you just won’t be able to jump as high. Why do we put the value in those days? Why do others put your value in those days too? The answer to both those questions is probably the same:

It’s very hard to accept ourselves just as we are, imperfections and all, even if some of those “imperfections” are what make us human.

In saying all this, I don’t mean to imply that we should just kick back, sit on the couch, and smoke weed all day under the guise of saying, “I am enough just this way.” In fact, doing that, you are probably still saying you’re not enough: not worthy enough to get up off the couch and do things for your life and yourself.

But I also don’t fully understand all this self-improvement stuff. There’s a whole section on it in every bookstore**. The implication in the idea that our selves need improvement is that we are broken, fundamentally, and in need of fixing.

I have had that belief for a long time. I spent years wondering what the hell is wrong with me and then years trying to fix those things. I could never quite get it right and all I did was beat myself up for it, thinking “Why if I can see it, can’t I just change it?”

It taken me a while, and even still I think I intellectually understand it but have not completely brought it into an emotional level of understanding, to realize that:

There is nothing wrong with me.

That doesn’t make me unaccountable for my actions or my words. I can’t just do whatever the fuck I want, saying, “Yo. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me***”. But beating myself up for my imperfections is a waste of time. I am human. I make mistakes. Doing so doesn’t mean there is something wrong with every fiber of my being. I can forgive myself and move on.

Coming to terms with that means that I can love myself. It doesn’t matter if you do or if you don’t tell me you do. I do not have to work for approval or love or anything. Because when I truly love myself for who I am, I invite others to do so. And those people are the ones who are really my friends. Those are the ones I want to hang around. They tell me they love me without even having to ask. They are pretty damn cool.

_____________

*I have never played basketball.

**Who am I kidding with this “every” bookstore? Isn’t Barnes and Noble the only one left?

I woke up this morning wanting to write. And I had taken a ton of notes yesterday on what I wanted to write about and it isn’t at all what I’m about to say.

I felt like it wouldn’t be appropriate, not today, to write about anything but what happened to our country 15 years ago.

I don’t talk with anybody about what I’m about to share with you, except to my husband, who knows where I was and why I always cry over breakfast on this date, as I expect many of us do. When people ask where I was, I answer simply, “on the train” and go no further. I guess I’ve always felt like my story wasn’t valid, that because I didn’t lose anybody (thankfully) that it didn’t matter as much as those that did.

But perhaps that’s part of a bigger problem: People don’t share enough or at all because they deny the validity of their stories and feelings. And when we don’t share, we don’t connect.

I believe that all our stories are legitimate simply because they are our own, as individual and unique as we each are to one another. And who has the right to judge the ways we are each of us affected by those stories and changed by them? No one. Not even myself.

So here’s my story…

I remember waking up late. I remember I was a sophomore at NYU and I was rushing to get to a class that I didn’t really care about but needed to take because it was a requirement. I remember I was on the train and the train kept stopping and starting and like any New Yorker I was cursing the MTA in my head.

And then just before the train was going to cross the Manhattan Bridge it stopped again and the conductor came on and it was really scratchy and he said something about a plane crash. I remember not thinking anything of it and still being frustrated that I was going to be late for class again. I hate remembering that I thought this way.

Then someone started preaching about the end of days and shit got scary. I became uneasy because I had watched too many horror movies to know that when people start quoting the Bible in public it’s because they think it really is the end of days.

Now I wanted to get off the train really badly but it wasn’t moving so I started to think about ways I could get off. I thought maybe I would have to walk through the train tunnels back to the last stop in Brooklyn and then, shit, I was really going to be late because it was already a little after 9am.

And then the train started to move, very slowly.

We started to creep onto the bridge. The train stopped, my car right in the center of the bridge. Silently, every person on the train turned to look out the window and we all watched as a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, which already had another plane in flames inside of it.

I remember going numb. I remember thinking it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t possibly be. And I didn’t realize it at the time but the skyline I knew so well, the one I took for granted, would never be the same.

The train started to move and people prayed aloud. Someone was singing. My heart started to race and I lost my hearing for a bit (something that used to happen a lot).

We got to West 4th street and as soon as I got out of the station, I started walking to class not even thinking it would be cancelled. I got to the middle of Washington Square Park and people were screaming and there was another perfect view of the towers. I remember thinking, “Poor Freshman. They’ve only just started.”

I picked up my phone and called my mom. I started to have a full blown panic attack. I heard her tell her co-workers that I was having a panic attack and she tried to calm me down but it was hard over the phone and it took a while. My mom finally snapped me out of it and said that my dad was stuck in New Jersey so to not go to the store we had on Bleecker Street but rather to where I worked at the time around the corner, the restaurant Da Silvano.

So that’s where I went. It was on Sixth Avenue. Another perfect view. There were droves and droves of people walking up the avenue from downtown. It looked like the zombie apocalypse.

We started to hand out water. Strangers exchanged cell phones thinking that it was the phone or their particular service that was a problem, but barely anyone could get through to anyone. I couldn’t get through to my sister. And I was scared to all hell that I had lost the most important person in my life, even though she worked nowhere near there. It was hard to think with any rationale that day.

And then I heard about the plane that hit the Pentagon, where my uncle worked at the time, and I called my cousin and couldn’t get through. I had this fear that everyone I knew was dead.

My co-workers and I stood in the middle of Sixth Avenue and watched the flames and hugged and cried. I hugged and cried with strangers. We all needed to hug and cry and watch because this was our city and it really didn’t matter who knew whom, because on that day we were all related.

I don’t remember too much of what happened next. I know that I somehow got in touch with my sister and my Aunt Maria who worked near her. I remember them walking down to get me and then taking the train up to my Uncle Carlos’s job in midtown and driving to New Jersey to my sister’s place. I remember sleeping on her couch and wearing her clothes to bed and I remember waking up the next day and finding out my Uncle was safe because he was on the other side of the Pentagon.

The city was eerie for a long time after that. Quiet. I remember going back to class a few days later not because I had to but because I just wanted to be around people. We just sat there in silence. We tried to talk about what happened but didn’t know how.

It was so inexplicable and no one could make sense of it. If I didn’t see it happen, I don’t know if I could ever fully believe it did, even today, when year after year people post about it on Facebook, and there are memorials, and it’s everywhere on the news.

It’s been 15 years and it’s still feels like one of those dreams you have that you can’t tell if it’s real or not. But it’s real.

New York has resumed its fast busy pace and we’ve started not looking at each other again, not because we are terrible people but because that’s just the way this city works: it’s a living, breathing organism that evolves at a quick pace and we have to keep up. It vibrates with energy and I’m almost positive I’ve heard it breathe.

But on that day and for many days after, New York slowed down, not to a halt, but just enough so that strangers could hug and cry and connect.

Greetings from the Atlanta airport*, where I am charging up and waiting for my connecting flight to Little Rock, Arkansas (don’t ask). I put off writing today as long as I could because I felt like I didn’t have anything to write about. I still don’t know if I do. But sometimes you have to just start writing to keep writing. That’s the worst part about it. You have to come to the computer or laptop or paper and trust that it will come. Y’all know about my struggle with faith.

Writing is still one of those things that I have to force myself to do because it’s not easy and I’m not as used to it as say, acting or biting my cuticles. It’s funny because people have often said things to me like, “That’s really cool that you do all that,” and they don’t just mean the acting and making movies but also the writing. They almost immediately follow it up with, “I wish I could do that too but I don’t know where to start.” I get that. I’ve felt that way. Like I said, I sometimes still feel that way with writing…

But I call bullshit.

It’s about willingness. You start with the willingness to try. If it’s totally new and hard and maybe something against your habit (not nature because people mix these two words up too often– big difference), then you find the willingness to do something different. Now, you will probably do things imperfectly and inevitably judge yourself for it (pot, meet kettle), but that brings me to my next stop:

You have to have the willingness to be a student again, to accept that no matter how many years you’ve been on this earth, you still only know a fraction of everything you could know.

I love this quote:

I just Googled it because I couldn’t remember who said it and apparently, according to the internet, it was either Alan Watts, Penelope Ward, or some guy named Doug. Seriously, we need a more accurate system of quoting.

Like I said, I love this quote. It reminds me of being a kid and just trying shit because I wanted to know what it felt like. I didn’t care (till puberty) whether or not I was good at it. I was a figure skater for a hot moment and fell on my ass a lot. I played piano because I liked the way it sounded (but I hated practicing). I wanted to be everything when I grew up because everything sounded so cool– and that’s one of the reasons I’m an actor 😉

Do you remember when the fear of trying something new wasn’t even a factor because the desire to do so was so great? I think all kids are super curious. My favorite question was why. Ask my mom, it didn’t annoy her at all. But what happens to that curiosity when we get older? Do we get jaded or think we’ve tried it all? Do we develop a fear of failure?

And there’s the next stop: the willingness to fail.

Have you ever seen our first movie? Oof. If we had given up after that, and there were lots of reasons to besides the film itself, we wouldn’t have made anything ever again. And when I think about that, I think about all the people I wouldn’t have met, all the great actors I wouldn’t have worked with, and never again having that feeling of a bunch of people in a movie theater watching your film.

I think the fear of failure is coupled with the fear of success. I believe that’s the subtext of the statement I mentioned earlier, “I wish I could do that too but I don’t know where to start.” We know where to start: at the beginning.

But what happens if you make it past all the stops? If you find the willingness: the willingness to try, to be a student again, and to fail? Well then you might actually succeed and when people see success, they see you.

Do you define yourself as a Marnie, Jessa, Hannah, or Shoshanna, or do none of these women even remotely represent you?

I had a dream that my life was a Girls story line, which means it looked nothing like it actually does for a regular gal living in Brooklyn. Things were good. I was of course a working actress, because the women in that show have no problem making money in their chosen professions and my biggest drama was some love storyline that I can’t specifically recall. I walked up to Lena Dunham and said, “Life is good. Don’t fuck it up by writing me some shitty storyline where Jessa or Marnie steals my boyfriend.”

Like I said, life was pretty simple.

I like Girls. The dialogue is funny and the plots keep me entertained. I think Lena Dunham is a super-talented writer. But I do have to say, I wish there was just one show that shows how life in Brooklyn actually is for a young woman trying to make it as an artist. We don’t all live in Fort Greene (I WISH) and everyone isn’t white and we burn the candles at both ends with day jobs and preferred career work and ain’t nobody got time to care who their ex-boyfriend is dating.

Am I the only one who wants to see someone more like me on the screen? I can’t tell if my life is too boring or if I’m not white and privileged enough. Maybe if someone watched a show about me, they’d be like, “Where is the entertainment in this entertainment? And if she’s Latina then why isn’t this more of a ‘real’ Latina show? Why isn’t this a telenovela?”

Identity has always been a tricky thing for me and the entertainment industry sure as hell hasn’t helped that. I’ve never quite felt like I fit in a white world or in the Latino world.

Because frankly, I’m too white to be Latina and I’m too Latina to be white.

It’s like that in the world for me, and it’s definitely like that in the acting industry for me.

Too White To Be Latina

There are few auditions I’ve been on where, with a tilted head, someone hasn’t asked me, “What are you?” What I’d like to answer is, “A human being. One that just gave you a kick-ass sample of my work. Were you paying attention to that?” Instead I say, “My dad’s from Portugal and my mom is Puerto Rican.” That’s immediately followed up with the question and a glimmer in their eye, “Do you speak Spanish?” No. No, I don’t. A sigh before they say,”That’s a shame.”

Too Latina To Be White

And then there was this one time, when I was sixteen and worked at the Gap in Bensonhurst. I was folding clothes and talking to my friend/co-worker about nothing at all and a group of Hispanic people walked in. My friend/co-worker turned to me and said, “Ugh. I hate fucking spics.” I hate to admit this but I was actually scared she would no longer be my friend when I told her, “What do you think my background is?” She said, “Aren’t you Italian?” I said no and told her what I was.*

And then there was that time when I was at NYU that a girl asked me if I would technically be considered mulatto because Portuguese is white (as if there aren’t Black people in Portugal). Oh yes, I am hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey. Want to see my tail?

Whenever I tell these experiences to people, they can’t believe it’s true, like “You mean racism actually exists?” Yes. Yes, it does, and in more subtle ways than in the stories I just told you.

When I was a kid and I learned what melanin was (the skin’s brown pigment) I thought, “This is what the fuss is all about? How much pigment people have? Well that’s stupid.” I’m not going to lie. I believe that the perceived ambiguity about my race or ethnicity (and even the ambiguity of whether it is a race or ethnicity) has helped me in some ways. I have been able to hide, to just not talk about it with people who I fear won’t get it.

But then I wonder, why am I hiding? Frankly, because it’s just been easier than explaining. And like I said, I’m also too white to be Latino. I can’t tell you how many times Puerto Ricans have told me I’m not really Puerto Rican because I don’t speak Spanish or I don’t speak/look a certain way. This is not reverse racism. There is no such thing. This is straight up, plain old racism.

There you have it. I am still confused, to be honest. And then sometimes I wonder, why do I have to identify myself to anyone at all? I’m a person and while a lot of people define themselves in a lot of different ways, there is one universal definition:

A person is a person because they have the right to be a person.

_______

*BTW, I used to define myself as Hispanic and the government still does. But what do they know? After further investigation, I decided to define myself as Latina. I can define myself as a puppy if I wanted to. My choice.

It’s been a busy summer. All of a sudden, the weather turned cool and I like the breeze but I wonder, where did the time go? They say that life speeds up when you get older. I didn’t believe it would happen so soon.

I thought I’d never get out of my 20s, that that angst and drama and feeling like things would never settle down and that I would never know what to do with my life, or never have any money, would ever go away. Some of it did. And some of it didn’t- does anyone ever know what to do with their lives? It’s hard, in a busy life, in a world that moves so fast, to keep your eye on what you think or say you want, to believe that even though it’s not in front of you, that that’s just a matter of “not yet” and not “never.”

I have never been good with patience, and maybe that’s an immaturity thing but what I’m starting to see is that it may be a matter of faith. I am a a spiritual person. I pray (yes, for those of you who think I’m an atheist because I am not a Catholic like I was raised to be). I pray to the universe, that which connects me to the trees and the earth and to all of you. I meditate. I listen for guidance. And some times I get glimpses, glimpses that what I want, who I believe I am supposed to be, is real and within me.

But how does one keep that faith when they can’t even recognize a whole summer has gone by? When our whole lives seem to be consumed by what’s happening right now, how do we see that we are still on the right path, heading towards what we want when we don’t immediately see results? I think the answer is faith, but I doubt my own faith. Often.

It’s said that there is no faith without doubt. Well, I must have a shit load of faith then because I doubt a lot. I wish I could say that my belief in myself and in the universe supersedes everything. That I am one of those strong and confident women who is entrepreneurial and believes she can do anything, much like a lot of the women in my generation that I admire. But to be honest, I am sometimes consumedby fear.

Fear that it will just never happen for me.

I am only 33 and yet I feel like I’m already too old, that by now I should have a kid or two and a house and/or a thriving business where I am my own boss that brings in a comfortable amount of income. But I don’t have any of those things. I have a day job and I make movies with Michael and I act and I sometimes write (hard for me of late) and I aspire to be. I’m told I’m building up the tools, gaining experience, making myself ready. It’s like I’ve been going to the gym my whole life in order to be strong and healthy but truthfully, my body is sore and tired because I’ve overworked it and I’m ready to just wear a fucking bikini already. Did that make any sense?

I feel like I’ve done enough prep for the life I know I want and sick of being consumed by the pace of this world and my own fear. My muscles are ready. I am ready. And yeah, I’m fucking impatient and I want what I want and I want it right now. Why is that a bad thing? Who has ever been content with waiting on the tarmac? Isn’t the point in life to take off to new heights? To change and grow and evolve? Isn’t that what humans just do naturally?

I’m tired of my life as is, even if so much of it looks a lot like the rest of Americans. This is not a judgment. More power to you if you are happy with the way your time passes. This feeling within me, this restlessness and this impatience and even the fear, maybe it’s not a bad thing. Maybe I need to feel all these things in order to grow… or rather to explode.